


Save us from sleep and what we are.

by TheCrowing1432



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCrowing1432/pseuds/TheCrowing1432
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dave Strider and you haven’t been sleeping well since that night. You are no stranger to nightmares, this game has certainly given you plenty of nightmare fuel. From the death of Bro, to your own deaths. But none of those nightmares have followed you to your waking hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save us from sleep and what we are.

Your name is Dave Strider and you haven’t been sleeping well since that night. You are no stranger to nightmares, this game has certainly given you plenty of nightmare fuel. From the death of Bro, to your own deaths. But none of those nightmares have followed you to your waking hours.

Its the screams. The screams of the already deceased being destroyed, killed for the second time by Lord English. They haunt you, even when awake you can hear it buzzing, throbbing in the back of your mind. It makes conversations with the others difficult, you often ask them to repeat their words. So you stopped talking to them, opting to respond by pesterchum only. You also listen to your music a lot, to try and drown out the screams. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 

Sleep is a rarity, most times you toss and turn in your bed. And the few times sleep does come to you, the nightmares return. So, you’ve stopped sleeping, only getting an hour here and there. Its starting to worry the others. But you wave them off. The breakup with Terezi hasn't made things any easier either, so you’ve broken off all contact with the others, opting to stay in your room on the meteor. 

…....................................................................................................................................................

Dave walks to the kitchen on the meteor for the first time in what seems like days. He’s staggering and barely coherent, walking to the counter to get himself some coffee, in his tired state, he does not even hear any screams.

“DAVE WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN BRO?” says the familiar voice of Dave’s moirail, Karkat. 

Dave pauses before answering “Room” he says simply. 

“WHY THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN IN THERE? I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CONTACT YOU FOR DAYS”

“Why the fuck do you think i've been in there” he snaps back, with a glance towards terezi, who he was unpleased to see had teal streaks down her cheeks. Great just what he fucking needed, guilt on top of all the fucked up shit he was dealing with already. 

“YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT, HAVE YOU BEEN SLEEPING?” 

They hear footsteps as Rose and Kanaya enter the kitchen, they stop when they see Dave.

“Hello Dave” they both chorus.

“Sup” Dave mumbles tiredly.  
“Dave, you look like shit” Rose snarkily said.

“Thanks Captain Obvious, you know I just came in here to get some goddamn coffee, not the third fucking degree from Lalonde and the troll brigade, leave me the fuck alone” he snaps, grabs his coffee and starts to storm out.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THE FUCK THERE STRIDER, AS YOUR MOIRAIL I NEED TO STEP IN HERE” Karkat says as he runs ahead of Dave and cuts him off.

“Kark-” Dave begins but Karkat cuts him off with a shooshing noise and he starts to pap his face. Immediately, Dave starts feeling drowsy. Rose comes over and takes the coffee mug before it can drop, and her face, so full of concern is the last thing Dave sees before he blacks out. 

The nightmares of a different sort appear. Dave finds himself in derse, in his tower and dressed in his dreamer outfit. He looks around expecting to see Rose, but she is gone. He jumps out the window and starts flying in the direction of where he thinks she went. ~This memory is all wrong, Rose should have been with me in the tower~ he thinks. He speeds up his ascent and in his haste he almost passes by something. He stops in mid air and looks down. There they are, their slabs, the ones that they had found floating in mid air, waiting for them. Rose’s was still there. 

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” He keeps repeating it over and over, giving every ounce of speed he can. He sees a giant green explosion in the distance.

“FUCK, ROSE, ROSE, FUCK, ROSE” He screams at the top of his lungs. 

Dave jerks awake, his body in a cold sweat. It takes him a few seconds to register a few things, for one, Rose is standing beside his bed, and two, Karkat is in the doorway looking worried.

“Yes, Dave?” Rose says concerned. 

Without warning Dave leans forward and hugs her, she stiffened at first and then returns it. Dave Strider, giving hugs and shouting her name in his sleep? 

“GET A PAIL YOU TWO” Karkat says, to which Dave flips him off, he chuckles and walks away.

At the mention of pails, Rose broke away from the hug, blushing lightly. 

“Are you okay, Dave?”

“Yeah, I’m fine”

“Well, if you’re sure” She starts to walk away.

“No, wait, fuck, Rose come back”

She stops, Dave Strider begging for her to come talk to him? What has the world come to. She turns around and goes over to the bed sitting down on it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Y-Yeah. I had...um a nightmare.”

Rose nodded, she had surmised as much.

“About me?”

Dave nodded and he explained the dream and the terror he had felt thinking she had been gone for good.

“Its okay, Dave I’m here now. But tell me what's been bothering you before this nightmare, I haven't seen you in days”

“You know a couple weeks ago, I was standing on top of the meteor, looking up in space, doing some monster gazing, right? When suddenly I thought my glasses shattered, but it turns it was space itself that was cracked, and i listened and I heard the screams and killing and stuff. Havent slept well since then”

Rose nodded, so that was it. 

“Im used to nightmares, God knows I’ve seen enough fucked up shit to make enough nightmares for the rest of my life, which will be fucking forever if im not killed. But its the screams, they follow me, even when awake.” He says hesitantly.

It seems to be the day of surprises, Rose Lalonde the Seer of Light is dumbfounded at Dave’s behavior, he’s normally so cagey, and yet here he is spilling his heart out. 

“Im sorry Dave, I had no idea”

“Of course not, I didn’t exactly shout it at the top of my lungs like Karkat does. “

“Is there anything else thats bothering you?”

Dave goes silent at this.

“Terezi?”

More silence, then slowly imperceptibly, Dave nods. 

“Im feeling like shit, Rose. I lost the se-first girl i've ever felt anything for.” Dave says stumbling on the word first.

Rose of course catches on immediately, and suspicions started forming in her mind. 

“I am curious, how did you two end up together anyway? It seems you don't really have all that much in common, other than a penchant for terrible drawings, and the desire to build complicated cities out of canned goods.”

Dave goes silent again, for he knows Rose is right. Honestly him and Tez really didnt have all that much in common. Their cultural differences aside, their personalities and tastes were just....different. But still he had tried to make it work, that is until he found out about her Kismesistude with Gamzee, that had been the straw that broke the camels back. 

“Was it done out of necessity I wonder?” Rose tosses out the question casually, hiding its true intent, and like a fish, Dave fell for it, Hook, Line and Sinker.

“Yeah....” he mumbles.

“Then, I wonder who you would have chosen to go with given the choice.” 

Dave is silent for a long time. 

“Dave?” 

He mumbles something unintelligibly

“Im sorry? I didnt quite catch that.”

He mumbles it again slightly louder.

“One more time.”

In a voice lower then a whisper he says “You”.

Rose’s suspicions confirmed, she smirks.

“But Dave we’re -” her voice is cut off as Dave puts a finger to her lips. 

“Dont say it, I already know Im fucked up for thinking it, I dont need to hear it from you as well”

Rose tries to say something. Dave moves his hand away and she says it again.

“When?”

Dave gives a derisive laugh. “When? When what? When did I realize I was hopelessly in love with you?”

Rose gasps at Dave’s casual tone in which he had admitted his love for her.

“From our first Pesterchum conversation all those years ago.”

Rose thinks about the conversation in question. She had been 10 then and learned about the internet and blogging, she had found Dave’s blog and his website Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff and loved it immediately. It took her some effort, but she had managed to acquire the chumhandle of the author. He was every bit as cool as she imagined him to be, of course she would never tell him that 

“Why?” it was a simple word, three letters, one syllable, yet loaded with so much.

Dave gave another self deprecating laugh. 

“Why? You ask me why? Shit, how long do you have? All fucking day? Well shit, first you are one of the most beautiful people I have ever fucking met, your hair, your eyes, just everything, is just....damn girl, you got it goin on. Besides that? You’re the only one who gets me. The only one who understands and gets all my bullshit, and what's more, you counter with your own special brand of bullshit. I mean John just ignores it, which isnt that same as seeing through it. And Jade just laps it up like a puppy, ironic given her current circumstances. You were the only one to ever see through my facades, the irony, everything. And it....stayed with me. You were on my mind almost every second, but of course I didn’t tell you that. You were the only part of my world unfazed by my irony, and it....bothered me, in a good way. 

I mean, fuck Rose, on LOHAC when Terezi told me about Godtier, I wasnt able to face my own demise, but when we were delivering the tumor, I was more then ready to give up my life beside you, I didnt even know we would reach godtier, I had figured we would be gone for good. And you know what Rose? You know fucking what? I was okay with it. Completely A OK with dying beside you.”

“If I recall correctly you’ve said something along the lines of “stuff said between you and me before we knew we were related we both know that was a lot of horseplay bullfuckery between like smartass 10 year olds or whatever ” Rose said, quoting him.

“Wow Lalonde, I just got done telling you, you understood me. I was lying. Making up bullshit. Trying to convince myself to fall out of love with you. I mean fuck thats why I got with Terezi in the first place, to try and forget you. But it didn’t fucking work.”

Rose smiled a genuine smile and started to play with his hair.

“You know Dave, I too have held a certain fondness for a certain....insufferable prick, since the day I met him in fact. You know theres nothing stopping us from being together if you want.”

Dave looked at her in wonderment. 

“But...Rose what about Kanaya?”

“What about her?”

“Well I thought you two were....together?”

“One date and a drunken kiss does not a relationship make Dave, after that incident we agreed to remain friends, the cultural differences were just too much of a hurdle to jump through.”

Dave nodded. “But what about...”

“Us being related? Oh come now Dave, almost every creation myth involves incest, and besides, who’s going to know or care? The trolls are all basically related. The term “Incesteous Slurry” often comes up in their mating habits. And even then we’re not even related by the traditional sense, more like magic green slime.” 

“What about John or Jade? What will they say?”

“Who cares? They are our friends and will accept us for what we are, if not then...well....as you would say “fuck them”. Rose says defiantly. 

“Are you sure you want to-” Dave’s words are cut off as Rose is kissing him. Her lips pressed up against his. The kiss is magical and seems to go on forever, in fact Rose would not be surprised if Dave had used his time powers and they were stuck there forever. A familar sound breaks them apart.

“HEY GET A ROOM YOU TWO” Karkat says from the doorway, they hadn’t heard him enter. Dave flips him off and Rose does the same. Karkat chuckles and leaves. 

Dave looks at the girl in his arms.

“I love you Rose.” He says.

“I love you too, Dave” She replies.  
Dave falls asleep with his arms wrapped around the orange clad figure in the darkness. He does not hear the screams anymore. All is well.


End file.
